At the Font of the Marvelous

Exploring Oral Narrative and Mythic Imagery of the Iroquois and Their Neighbors

Anthony Wonderley

Publication Year: 2009

The folktales and myths of the Iroquois and their Algonquian neighbors rank among the most imaginatively rich and narratively coherent traditions in North America. Mostly recorded around 1900, these oral narratives preserve the voice and something of the outlook of autochthonous Americans from a bygone age, when storytelling was an important facet of daily life. Inspired by these wondrous tales, Anthony Wonderley explores their significance to the Iroquois and Algonquian religion and worldview.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

I’VE DONE WELL by Syracuse University Press and appreciate their professionalism
and support throughout this labor. Special thanks to editors
Linda Cuckovich, Mary Selden Evans, Christopher Vecsey, and Glenn D.
Wright and to manuscript readers, including Jordan Paper. ...

Introduction: Oral Narrative of the Iroquois
and Their Neighbors

ON A VISIT to Cherokee country about the year 1812, a literate Mohawk
chief named John Norton was intrigued by an unusual aspect of the landscape.
Norton loved the oral traditions of the north and, when he asked
his hosts to tell him about the feature, he expected to be entertained by a
tale explaining how the oddity came to be. The Cherokees, however, only ...

1 Iroquois Star Lore: What Does It Mean?

HOW DOES a folktale or myth originate? Is it possible to account for a
specific plot? One of the rare attempts to explain an oral narrative in the
Northeast was made by archaeologist Lynn Ceci (1978) in a study of the
Pleiades constellation among the Iroquois. According to Ceci, a brief and
risky growing season for maize in the Northeast happens to coincide with
the movement of the Pleiades—its apparent disappearance in the spring and ...

2 War in the West: Nineteenth-Century Iroquois Legends of Conquest

THE IROQUOIS of western New York frequently alluded to wars fought
by their ancestors with a foreign people called Kahkwa living on Eighteen
Mile Creek some twenty miles southwest of today’s city of Buffalo (map
2). As this watercourse flows into Lake Erie (vicinity of North Evans), it
forms a spectacular gorge fully deserving of a marvelous tale. Although ...

3 Killer Lizards, Eldritch Fish,and Horned Serpents

ANYONE PERUSING THE LITERATURE of Native American oral narrative
“soon learns to recognize many recurrent patterns or types, which transcend
geographical and linguistic boundaries” (Thompson 1929, vii). Here,
I discuss three old friends of this sort—story types repeatedly documented
either as self-contained tales or as episodes within longer narratives. ...

4 Old Good Twin: Sky Holder During the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries

FRENCH JESUITS in the seventeenth century gave his name, variously
spelled, as Teharonhiaouagon, “he who holds up the sky,” or Sky Holder.1
Sometimes said to be one of two brothers, he was described by the missionaries
as the great god of the Iroquois, their mightiest spirit, and the
principal being “they acknowledge as a Divinity, and obey as the great ...

5 The Story of Windigo

AS AN ANTHROPOLOGY STUDENT during the 1960s, I was taught that
windigos were mythical cannibal giants known to Algonquian speakers
(Cree, Ojibwa-Chippewa, various Algonquin bands, Montagnais-Naskapi)
from Saskatchewan to Quebec. Embodying cold and the far north, these
beings were said to be reflections of their boreal forest setting. Algonquian
people who believed in windigos, I also learned, were subject to a mental ...

6 The Friendly Visitor: An Iroquois Stone Giant Goes
Calling in Algonquian Country

THE TALE MOST CLOSELY resembling a literary short story in all of
native North America may be one documented among eastern Algonquian
people of the Canadian Maritimes. It tells of a male cannibal giant who
suddenly emerges from the woods at the camp of a small, human family.
Welcomed as a person, the monster takes up residence with the humans and
even defends his adopted family against the onslaught of a second cannibal ...

7 Mythic Imagery in Iroquoian Archaeology

ANYONE VISITING an archaeological dig in the Northeast sees that virtually
every object removed from the earth—mostly chips of stone with an occasional
fragment of bone or pottery—looks unremittingly plain. Most artifacts
bespeak little beyond simple technology and a nose-to-the-grindstone concern
with subsistence because decoration or elaboration of any sort rarely survives. ...

Afterword

... First, oral narrative provides one of the few roads to apprehending the
conceptual world of the ancient Northeast. Although one cannot assume
antiquity of any specific story, it is reasonable to suppose age is indicated
roughly by a tale’s wide distribution. Accordingly, I infer some oral narrative
is likely to be very old. Aspects of stories about the stars must go ...

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